Writer-producer Aaron Harberts, one of the principal executive producers behind Star Trek: Discovery, may be a newcomer to the Star Trek universe as but his long list of standout TV credits -- including genre standouts like Roswell, beloved cult fare with his mentor Bryan Fuller including Pushing Daisies, and mainstream hits like Revenge -- suggest that he’s more than ready for a stint in the captain’s chair.

Harberts and his longtime writing partner Gretchen J. Berg came aboard the newest installment of the venerable sci-fi franchise at the behest of Discovery’s original showrunner Bryan Fuller, and when Fuller had to depart to devote more attention to American Gods, the duo stayed at the helm alongside executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman.

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As the series warps into its streaming debut on CBS All Access, Harberts shares some of the inside secrets of the show’s creation -- including what to expect whenever a seeming violation of Trek canon rears its Gorn-like head.

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CBR: The conflict between the Klingons and the Federation has been described as a Cold War. But it doesn’t look too cold.

Aaron Harberts: It isn’t so cold. I would say that the show starts in a place where the Klingons and the Federation have been hating. The last real large battle is the battle of Donatu V, 10 to 12 years before our show begins. That’s sort of the last big military incident battle between the two. So we’ve had a decade or so of no contact, where the Klingons have sort of retreated behind their space, and the Federation has been doing their own thing.

The pilot and the second episode really focus on what happens when these two cultures, who have been apart for quite some time, and have kept their distance, suddenly arrive on a collision course.

In those occasions where you guys appear to stray from established canon, do you plan to address those apparent deviations on a story level?

Absolutely. I wish we could watch it with them on the couch. When something looks like it is wildly divergent from what people know to be canon, I always want to say, “Hold on a second! Just wait -- we know.”

Nine times out of 10, we know that we’re violating canon. We also know that two or three episodes later, we’re going to turn it. If people are patient, and sort of don’t have a knee-jerk reaction to what they’re seeing, the delight has been resolving it, tying it up, showing everybody that we’re in on it.

That’s something that we really are excited about in terms of the storytelling. So maybe the fans go a little bit crazy on the couch for a second, but either an act later, a scene later, or two episodes later, we hope that they’ll say, “Oh, I get it. I get what they were doing. Oh, they didn’t violate it. They weren’t wrong. They called it out and we move on.”

How would you describe how the protagonists fit into what we just described as far as the two cultures now?

Star Trek has always been a story of exploration and discovery. A physical exploration, an external exploration, through the galaxy, through space. This story is also an exploration that is internal. So the character Michael Burnham is going to make some choices that she never thought she would make, and she’s going to be put in a position she never thought she’d be in. And it really is the story of someone who has to start over and discover who they are, and find themselves.

In wartime, how does the Star Trek tradition of exploration fit into that context?

That has been a difficult thing, because you do want to do those episodes where they are exploring, where they’re going to other places. Our exploration is usually hinging on strategy. So if there’s a planet that could help us, if there’s an alien race that might have intelligence that we need, if there are alien beings, that can help us strategically, that’s where the exploration goes.

The first three, four, five episodes are all about, “What lengths would you go to to win a war? Would you compromise your morals? Would you say, ‘We’re doing this thing to this planet, or to this creature, in the hopes of winning a war and bringing peace to the universe, but at the expense of something?’”

At the end of the day, what’s the most important thing is the ideals of Starfleet, the ideas of the Federation, and it’s a dark period in the Federation’s history where they have to win a war, but they also have to stay true to themselves. It’s been a really fun balance in terms of the character stories about who’s on board with that? Who’s not? How can we resolve conflict and still maintain our morals, and our ethics, and our ideals?

Why is it important to have a female character at the center of your story? How was that dramatically more valuable?

It is so dramatically valuable because most of the captains in Trek are fully formed individuals. They might have flaws, they might have character quirks, they might have weaknesses, emotional soft spots, vulnerabilities. What’s so great about Sonequa’s character is that Michael Burnham thinks she knows who she is, thinks she knows what she deserves within the ranks of Starfleet, and that’s all upended.

So now we’re telling the story of an individual who thought she knew who she was, thought she knew where she was going, and she’s not that fully formed person anymore. She’s having an existential crisis. She’s having an identity crisis. A human raised on Vulcan, raised by Sarek to be humanity’s best hope, and suddenly, she finds herself at a place where she has no idea who she is. What’s really cool for us is to take the audience on a really relatable journey of self-discovery.

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That choice to integrate her into Spock’s and Sarek’s family is a big creative swing, and is either going to have huge dividends, or it’s going to blow up in your face. I’m sure you guys went back and forth in the room before you made that choice.

Oh my God! We went back and forth and back and forth. Bryan Fuller was one of those people who said, “Let’s do it.” And the thing that’s fantastic about Bryan is that he has the currency and the cache, not only from just who he is as a writer and his track record, but also as someone who has lived and loved the Star Trek universe since he was a kid, since he wrote on Voyager, etc, etc. And he was the one who said, “We’re doing this. I’ll handle the fans. I’ll handle the blowback.”

Only somebody like Bryan can make that choice, and he embraced it wholeheartedly. Had Bryan not been a part of the show, I don’t know that anybody would have had the courage to say, we are doing that. He gave us the courage. Again, this is a friendship that goes back to 2003. Bryan taught me and Gretchen [Berg] so much about television writing. He’s been a friend and a mentor.

And knows Trek.

He knows Trek. It’s in his blood. He brought the two of us to the party, and I will never not give him credit for that, because he really did bring us to the party. He opened up a toy chest and said, “This is an okay toy chest to play in.” So there we are.

Does the streaming service allow you to push the envelope of what we’ve known as Star Trek content?

The streaming service has definitely allowed us to push boundaries. We can do nudity. We can do violence that we can’t do on broadcast. We can have language.

Do you?

For us, it has to be really carefully considered. One of the most important things that Gretchen and I have been learning since we came on the show is, just how anecdotally people come to Trek by way of their mother, their father, their older brother or their older sister. How many families watch the show, took in the show, turn it off, had a debate. It really is a property that is passed down generation to generation.

So if you’re going to do something like language, or a little nudity, or a little extra violence -- which that’s one of the sad things about where we are in terms of media: violence is accepted; sexuality, maybe not so much. We’re taking great pains to make sure that nothing feels gratuitous if we’re doing it. That if language is involved, it might be language that’s celebratory.

We have a moment where three of our scientists have just pulled off the most incredible thing ever. They are talking about concepts that are so above everybody else’s head, and one of them says, "This is so fucking cool." And she’s a cadet, and she’s catches herself, and she looks at her boss, because oh my God, she just dropped an F-bomb. And her boss, played by Anthony Rapp, turns to her and says, “You’re right, cadet -- this is fucking cool.” So in a moment like that, where I feel like we’re celebrating smarts and people who are at the top of their game. It’s rare when we’ll do it, but if we do it, we want to make it feel organic.

As diverse as Star Trek has been, as progressive as it’s been, you guys get the first shot at portraying a homosexual relationship with no sci-fi hook to it. They’re just people. Tell me about that.

As a gay person, as a gay man, and again, this was something that for Bryan was very important to him to do. We said, “Absolutely. It’s important to do.” So the character that he created, Lieutenant Paul Stamets, is gay. I feel like the way we’re treating him and his partner -- Anthony Rapp plays Stamets. Wilson Cruz plays his partner Doctor Hugh Culber, who’s a medical officer on the ship -- what I’m most proud about is we’re just playing them like any other couple.

I always feel like visibility isn’t super important, but visibility in the right way is: these are people. They work on a ship. They happen to date. That throws them into conflict. We get to see how the conflict works its way out on the bridge and on missions, and then we get to see how they bring it back home. What I’m most proud of is that we tried to jut carve out those simple, everyday, life moments that any couple enjoys. I’m really proud of Wilson and Anthony, the way they portray it. It feels so real, and it doesn’t feel like it’s trumpeting itself just to trumpet itself. And they go on quite a journey. Gay, straight, whatever, everyone will see themselves in that couple.

Klingons on Star Trek: Discovery standing with lights.

Is it safe to call this in some ways an origin of the Prime Directive? Is that what you guys are getting to?

That’s a very interesting question. We had talked a lot about that. The Prime Directive comes up a lot. The syntax for the Prime Directive has changed in different versions of the show. I would say, when it comes to the Prime Directive, what we’re most excited about is how the Prime Directive can be applied to one’s self.

What I want more than anything else is for the person who’s a diehard Trek fan to be streaming the show, and the kid walks through in front of the TV, or the wife, or the boyfriend, or the girlfriend, and says, “What are you watching?” and suddenly gets engrossed in the scenes enough to sit down.

What we want more than anything else is for these characters to pull you in, and these stories to pull you in, because we’re dealing with universal themes, and real human beings who are finding themselves, and the sci-fi and all that fun is like the icing on the cake. So I hope it’s the show that everybody watches in the house.

Star Trek: Discovery debuts Sunday, Sept. 24 on CBS and CBS All Access.